Romney vs. 'amnesty'

The Washington Examiner's Philip Klein pushed Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom's argument last night that his candidate is "against amnesty, and Newt Gingrich made it very clear he was for amnesty," prompting this exchange:

I followed up by asking Fehrnstrom whether Romney believed in deporting those immigrants who are already here illegally.

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“He doesn’t believe in granting them amnesty,” Fehrnstrom responded.

That started a back and forth exchange worthy of Abbott and Costello, as Fehrnstrom kept continuing to drive the "no amnesty" point home, and I tried to get more details.

I followed up again, asking what "no amnesty" would mean for the people already here.

“Well, first, you have to get turn off the magnets to get them to stop coming.”

Again, I asked about those already here.

“He would not grant them amnesty," Fehrnstrom said.

And so on. Fehrnstrom eventually told Klein that a combination of employer verification and turning "off the magnets" that bring illegal immigrants here would lead to a "self-retreat" among undocumented workers.

But the difficulty issue of this issue, for Romney, is that while he has staked out a firmly anti-illegal immigration in the primary, he has to articulate it without literally saying, "Round them up and send them home," or anything else that would be lethal in a general election. That means targeting other Republicans for their deviations on immigration, but also stopping short of a maximalist position himself.